Sweeper: What is Nationalism?

This week we looked at the idea of Nationalism and how different groups will use medieval examples as symbols for their cause. Dr. Marc Saurette lent us his wisdom on medieval examples of chivalry, and how the context of the middle ages has made them a heroic symbol. One of our readings for this week paid particular attention to the extremist group the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK. The KKK is known for seeing themselves as heroes and have adopted the idea of being ‘New Crusaders’, like those from the medieval past.

The first responders this week dedicated a lot of attention to the KKK reading, most likely because it was both the shortest, most comprehensible, and the most relevant reading assigned for the week. With the rise of Donald Trump, white nationalism groups such as this have made a profound return to the public eye. This made us begin to think about our own national identity, as the majority of our class is or most likely identifies as white. In Canada, however, we have a very large multicultural population to consider, many of whom are throughly Canadian. This has lead us to wonder what Canadian nationalism is and if we have one like other countries do. This transformed into our questioning of what nationalism is and how it develops in countries, and what the difference is between a constructed nationalism and a natural nationalism. Our questions kept leading to more questions and our group realized that like our questions, nationalism too has many branches which splinter. There is no one answer to the question of nationalism, but we would love to open this discussion to the class and hear your opinion.